


This is How it Could Have Gone

by dirtylittlegreasemonkey



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:32:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5352491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtylittlegreasemonkey/pseuds/dirtylittlegreasemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three what if scenarios. What if Robert had stayed around in the garage once he'd brought Aaron coffee and asked to be mates; what if Robert HAD gone for that drink with Aaron; what if Robert hadn't stopped the kiss on the lay-by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is How it Could Have Gone

**Author's Note:**

> For the Robronversary! Lots of love to you all!
> 
> These are three separate What Ifs...so what happens in the first scenario doesn't affect the story in the second part and so on. It just explores what could have happened canon-wise if one thing changed.

**1.**

**Motor oil and coffee. Grease wiped across his knuckles.**

This is how it could have gone:

“So…” The pause slid into the air between them, a smile playing across his lips. Aaron looked and then promised he wouldn’t – rejected the whole idea of it. “Mates?” Robert held out his hand. It would have been warm from the cardboard cup. Just.

Aaron looked from his hand to his face; Robert was holding his breath. He felt sorry for him really – no friends, a family that transparently despised him, a wife that was clueless to the extent of his manipulation. But his sympathy didn’t extend too far, only as far as thinking his hair was slightly tousled by the December wind, that his leather jacket looked expensive and not warm enough even if it did fit snugly against his body. No – he didn’t feel sorry for him; he brought it on himself.

He stood in the doorway, flicked the lid of his pen. He didn’t turn away like instinct told him to. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

“So you won’t be wanting this then?” Robert said, his smile souring. He raised the cup as if it were a glass of champagne.

“Bob’s finest.”

“Too good for coffee, are you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Robert handed it over and Aaron tried to ignore the weird skip his heart did when Robert’s fingers touched his. He knew why – of course he did, he wasn’t an idiot – but he wasn’t going to think about it. Robert was a prick and a scumbag. And here Aaron was, drinking the coffee Robert had bought for him, unable to look him in the eye anymore.

“I used to work here, you know.” Robert ran his hand along the bonnet of the car Aaron had slammed moments earlier. He’d embedded himself in the garage now. Aaron wondered if he was intending on staying until they’d both finished their drinks. Robert hadn’t started his, he hadn’t even placed his lips to the rim and blown gently.

“Did you?” He tried to seem uninterested. He had some idea already. He can’t remember how it came up – chit chat from Cain maybe. A snide remark about Robert not being the sort of guy to want to get his hands dirty anymore. An image of him with an oil smear across his jaw appeared in Aaron’s head. Overalls. He dismissed it and dragged his eyes down an order form on a clip board. His insides curled in pleasure at the coffee’s warmth. It was exactly how he liked it.

“Nine, ten years ago maybe,” Robert said, leaning back against the car and watching Aaron.

Aaron rubbed the side of his neck. His grey jumper was starting to make him feel hot at the collar.

“I miss it sometimes,” Robert continued, sounding insincere. He must have seen the look of disbelief pass Aaron’s face and he crossed his arms against his body. He didn’t have the body of a man who did physical work but Aaron pretended not to notice. “Well…I wasn’t very good at it.” Robert’s eyes tracked over him and Aaron’s throat seemed to close up, drying. “But you seem to know your stuff.”

Robert took a long sip of drink so that the silence padded out the lapse in conversation, forcing Aaron to shift from foot to foot and try and think of something to say. Robert made him uneasy. He couldn’t work out what Robert was thinking when he looked at him like that.

“So about this car then,” Aaron said and headed towards the computer. He could relax if he didn’t have to watch Robert watching him.

“How much has Chrissie told you?”

Aaron didn’t like the way her name suddenly made him feel and regretted even mentioning the car. He didn’t want anything to do with the stupid car. Or Robert Sugden.

“She just said you want a classic car. A poncy one.” He felt Robert stand beside him, his body swayed a little and then both their bodies made contact for just a second, just long enough for Aaron to feel Robert was warmer than him. The computer was so fucking slow at loading webpages. Aaron could see their reflections, their proximity in the screen.

“What I really want-” Robert said and his arm moved to prop himself up against the desk. He was leant in close, trying to see the monitor. Aaron thought he could feel Robert’s breath skirting over his neck. He shivered. “- is an Austin-Healey.”

“Right.” The coffee was making him hotter, making it harder to swallow.

“If you can get your hands on one.”

“Yeah well, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Money’s no object,” Robert said and Aaron found the cold creeping in again. Cold, hard cash. That was all Robert was bothered about – any means possible.

“Course not.”

“I can help you look if you like. Show you the kind of thing I’m after.”

Aaron had his back to Robert but he knew he was still being looked at. Studied. “It’s supposed to be a surprise,” Aaron said.

“I’ve never been very good with surprises,” he said and Aaron regretted the moment he dared look up because Robert had that look on his face again, the half sly-smile, the muscle in his cheek quivering.

He couldn’t bear it any more. The static, the tension. He stood up. “Maybe you need to tell your fiancée that then,” he said and pushed past Robert, gritting his teeth against the brief, confusing pressure their bodies made when they touched. He wanted to tell Robert to fuck off, but the mention of Chrissie had build a barrier between them as it was. He saw Robert straighten up in the periphery of his vision and he felt a sudden need not to end this conversation on a sour note.

“Thanks for the coffee but I’ve got work to do so…”

“Any time,” Robert said, letting the words and the full-body stare drag out before he left.

 

* * *

 

 

  **2**

**Parked out of the front of the pub. Drizzle in the air, on the windscreen. Robert staring straight ahead.**

This is how it could have gone:

 

“Listen, er…I’m gonna go to town later for a beer.”

“Yeah?”

“Join me if you want?”

“You what?”

“You know – just a drink.”

He looked away again, straight ahead through the drizzle smeared windscreen. Aaron had a loose thread in his pocket and he wrapped it around his thumb. He’d made Robert smile a minute earlier, that’s what had made him brave (and stupid) to ask him out for a drink- the thought that he might be able to make him smile again.

“I know what a drink is,” Robert said and then his hand twitched, moving towards the steering wheel. He started the car. Aaron was glad of the noise; he felt like Robert and the whole world could hear the clumsy thump of his heart. He expected Robert to drive off, leaving his invitation ripped and unanswered. “Eight o’clock, then?” Robert said, making no eye contact.

“Yeah, er…yeah. Eight’s fine.” Aaron looked down at his feet, his teeth pulling at his bottom lip.

“I’ll book a taxi,” Robert said and then without another word, or a look in Aaron’s direction, pulled out of the parking space and drove off.

*

Through sheer will power alone, Aaron resisted the urge to wank off in the shower. He reasoned it’d only make things worse, because there was no way he’d be able to sit beside Robert drinking a pint without thinking about it, without thinking about him in that way. How had it come to this? Robert Sugden. Smug and smarmy. Aaron could hate him. He wanted to hate him – he should. He was sure Robert was only messing with his head because he could – mind games and control were a sport to him. If he could stage a raid on his own fiancée then it didn’t bear thinking about what else he was capable of. Aaron blamed him entirely for the feelings of unease.

He waited outside the pub for the supposed taxi Robert had booked, wearing a long sleeved t-shirt and coat. He wasn’t going to wear a shirt; it was just a drink. In the cold he could smell his own aftershave and had a crushing moment of self-consciousness where he worried it would seem like he was making an effort. The taxi pulled up five minutes after Aaron had thought about sacking it off and going back upstairs, but there had been a strange pull making him wait, making him stay.

Robert was in the back of the cab, elbow propped on the window ledge. He fidgeted with the cuffs of his leather jacket when Aaron pulled open the door.

“Get in then,” Robert said, lines carving themselves into his brow.

“You’re late.”

“’e was the one who kept me waiting,” the taxi driver said from the front seat, shifting all the blame onto Robert. Aaron looked Robert over and felt a pulse in his throat quicken – yeah, Robert was the sort of guy to spend too long getting ready. But he looked good – clean blue shirt, jeans and jacket - and just for a minute, in his own head, Aaron let himself acknowledge how good Robert looked – because if he didn’t, he’d be looking at him all night. Now he could move on from it.

*

They ended up in one of the newest bars in Leeds. Aaron didn’t dare risk taking Robert to Bar West or the other gay bar he liked because really he had no idea what this drink really meant – if it meant anything at all. Robert seemed to relax after the first pint. They found seats tucked in a corner and after a while Robert stopped looking at the door, stopped looking at everyone else besides Aaron. Aaron bought the third round and by then Robert had exhausted all the work chat.

“So what’s your story then?”

“You what?”

“You know, your story. Tell me about yourself.”

“Sorry,” Aaron said, lips hovering around the rim of his beer bottle. “I thought with all the estate manager chat you thought you were on some sort of a job interview.”

Robert scoffed, folding his arms across his chest and straightening out his back. He was embarrassed - maybe Aaron was wrong after all. Aaron followed as Robert’s gaze drifted out again and lingered on the bar, the pretty girls leaning up against it. It became obvious right then, right in the tight centre of his chest – he didn’t want Robert to be looking at anyone else at all. He placed his beer on the table, flicking his thumb over the peeling label.

“Go on then, what do you want to know?”

Robert turned in his seat, the girls now lost from his eye line and leant on the table, closing in on Aaron. His head was bowed slightly and he looked up at Aaron with blue, boyish eyes. Everything about his gaze was playful and elusive and Aaron could only hold his stare for a few seconds before looking down again. The beer was making him warm and horny, blocking his head from rational thoughts but he almost didn’t care.

Robert took a slow, sucking drink of beer and then his mouth was redder, slicker. “Are you always this good at conversation or is it only me you save it for?”

Aaron shrugged. “Depends on if I think someone’s worth talking to.”

Robert smiled and Aaron gave himself a point for that – the crinkles by his mouth, the white teeth, the glimpse of tongue.

“And…?”

“And what?”

“Am I? Worth talking to.”

“Still making my mind up,” Aaron said and then let himself smile so that Robert know he was just teasing. He raised his bottle to Robert, standing up. “You want another?”

Robert stopped him, placing his hand on his arm and Aaron found himself spiked with adrenaline. Robert’s touch, the warm, assertive weight of it, felt like the only thing in the world that existed, the bar was just a blur.

“Something stronger,” he said with a soft glint in his eyes.

Aaron returned to the table a little while later, just in time to see Robert switch his phone off and smuggle it back into his jacket. He slid the drink over to Robert and sat back down, noticing Robert had shifted positions and now their knees touched when Aaron wasn’t careful. He tried to be careful, but his body had other ideas. Their knees grazed, thighs skimmed and then separated. Accidental heat.

Robert raised the glass of amber liquid. “What is it?”

“Dunno. Just told the barman you wanted something strong. I told him it was for a posh twat.”

Robert sipped and then once he’d licked the alcohol from his lips he laughed – not what Aaron expected but it gave him a satisfying ripple of pleasure down his spine. “It’s pretty good,” he said, offering Aaron a taste with the tilt of the glass.

Aaron shook his head and sat back in the seat. Robert’s legs were spread and now they were permanently connected at the knee. After a moment of sitting wordlessly, Robert flattened his palm against his own leg and, for a fraction of time that felt much longer than the reality, his fingers brushed against Aaron’s thigh.

“Is that really what you think of me?” Robert asked, his voice sounded downtrodden. He stopped the challenging look in Aaron’s eye for a moment and gazed at his drink.

“I thought that’s what you wanted people to think of you. You live in the big house, like to throw your money around to get people running round after you.” The insults landed softer than the venom Aaron had thought about them with.

“Yeah well, people don’t know the half of it.”

Aaron raised his eyebrows and returned to his new drink, peeling away a strip of the fresh label. He felt Robert watching him and the mood tilted again – it was the drink that did it, fogging through emotions and replacing them with new feelings.

“You know what they say about this, don’t you?” Robert said, picking up the shredded label with two fingers. “People that pick at labels like that.” Robert budged in seat again. Closer. Aaron could smell him again. Whiskey and hops and a dark, oceanic smell from his aftershave. His cock stirred in his underwear and he tried to push away the thick need to swallow that was building in his throat.

Robert drained the rest of his drink and he was breathless when he next spoke, leaning in to tear at another edge of the label. “It means they’re sexually frustrated,” he said and studied Aaron’s face for a reaction.

Aaron fixed him with his gaze. “Speak for yourself mate.” He was humming with it, skin alive with it. Frustration. It was screaming from him.

“I’ve got no problems at home, mate,” Robert said, mouth lifted with smugness.

“Well in that case, you’ll be wanting to get back to her then.” Of course it was a challenge. Of course it fucking was.

“No, yeah, you’re right. I tried to call her and see if she’s still awake but…out of battery.”

Aaron couldn’t stop himself grinning, nodding through the lies as Robert waved a blank screened phone at him.

“So you wanna go on somewhere else?”

“If you want.”

*

They walked but the cold wasn’t sobering like Aaron thought it might be. He didn’t know where they were headed and it didn’t seem like Robert did either. They found a pub, just out of the main stretch of bars, which looked nice enough from the outside, except for a doorman outside whose sole purpose seemed to be to block the entrance.

“Sorry lads. We’re full. Christmas party.”

“You’re kidding me? Full? This dump? What a joke!” Robert said, scoffing and louder than he should have – louder and more aggressive than Aaron would have dared with the look on the man’s face. Before the bouncer could throw any punches, Aaron put his hands on Robert’s shoulders and pulled him away, off down a side street which took them away from the pub. It was more of an alley, lit only by overhead Christmas lights strung at either end.

Robert jerked away from Aaron’s steering, ranting about the bouncer and how if he’d tried anything Robert would have had him done for assault. Aaron walked ahead of him now, riled by the switching mood changes. He couldn’t keep a hold of Robert or what he wanted. It was hot, cold and nothing in between. And he resented his own stupidity too, for being fooled into thinking there was a spark – or there was a chance – of something between them.

“I’m calling a cab,” Aaron said.

“Why? What for?”

Aaron shook his head and walked a faster pace to increase the distance between them. “I’ve had enough.”

“Aaron! Aaron, wait.”

Aaron could hear Robert behind him, running to close the gap but he kept walking, kept trying to ignore his wavering desire to stop and look at Robert again, to ignore the hope that rose up in his chest. He concentrated on his feet on the pavement, the December cold seeping through under his clothes, the lyrics of a Christmas song he’d heard earlier. He hated Robert, he hated himself for having hope, for letting himself drift into some weird game of Robert’s or entertain a fantasy that Robert might want him.

In a whirl that he fell helplessly into, like falling, like tripping or crashing – a dizzy, frantic drunken blur – Robert span him around, hands on his body and then with enough force to knock him back a few paces, he kissed him. Robert’s hands framed his face, steadying the sway of their bodies and the force of the kiss. Aaron felt him paw at his coat when the staggering stopped and the heat of their mouths, the slow hungry grunts of breath bit through the cold. He slid his hands under Robert’s jacket, feeling his pulse just as crazed as his own and kissed him back just as hard in the dark of the alleyway. This was it, what he’d been hoping for after all.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 **3**  

**A fake call out. A lay-by. A kiss.**

This is how it could have gone:

Robert might’ve said _wait_ or _fuck_ or just moaned right into his mouth, but whatever he’d said he didn’t repeat it. He let Aaron’s hands skim down his shoulders and pull his leather jacket right off his body and kissed him again, this time tongue meeting Aaron’s with another groan of pleasure.

Need dominated and Aaron didn’t give their location, their exposure a second thought. The soft flat of his palms rubbed and circled against Robert’s blue sweater, feeling his hard nipples rising through. He’d had a guy last night, but that – him – felt colourless, lifeless compared to this one kiss with Robert. Nothing had ever come this close to making him feel alive. Nothing.

What had he imagined happening when he arrived at the lay by? More mind games, more hot-cold push-pull that Robert toyed with like an art form? Fixing a stupidly simple issue on Robert’s Audi just to get no thanks? Not this, never this. Even if he’d hoped for it, he couldn’t have imagined the reality of it. Robert’s fingers warm and firm on his face, in the back of his hair.

Aaron wasn’t thinking about the road, about the cars that might drive past. His fingers curled into Robert’s top and pulled it right over his head. He took a moment, leaving Robert’s mouth reddened and panting where he just let his fingers lick up and down Robert’s chest, against the frenzied rise and fall of his chest. With one hand Robert pulled their heads together so they were forehead to forehead – breathing, trembling – and with the other he opened Aaron’s fly and waited for Aaron to move and mirror the action.

“Fuck!”

Robert’s head rolled away just for a second, when Aaron took a hold of his cock. The action stole breath from them both and Aaron was flawed by the half-quivered laugh Robert choked out. He pressed a wet, unsteady kiss at the corner of Aaron’s mouth and then they were both slumped against each other, against the van – propped – jerking each other off in a lust that Aaron had never felt before.

No one had told him that feeling so alive was possible, that it felt so vivid and sharp, that it would be almost unreal. Robert’s kisses now were full and slow - when they could be, when they weren’t broken by a gasp or a cry. Everything was primal, blood pounding in his head. The taste of him, the hot, hard feel of him. The agony of pleasure built and built. He wanted Robert’s mouth on him, to have his tongue draw slick demands on his cock – to submit to him like he could never dream of wanting to with anyone else. But they were too new to each other, too urgent. Aaron would have fucked him if he’d had a condom on him. The thought of never getting to fuck him was unbearable, unliveable.

Robert’s hair was darkening on his forehead. He repeated Aaron’s name over and over until the sound of it wasn’t anything he recognised. It merged into noises, grunts and pants and then all Robert could say was: _I’m….I’m…_

Then he came. He did nothing with the mess, did nothing but spin Aaron on his feet and push him into the van, push him back against the passenger seat and get on his knees. Aaron’s head swam, vision came and went and then he felt Robert’s hands on his hips, pulling down his underwear and finally, the desperate descent of Robert’s mouth.

There was no going back.

 

 

 

 


End file.
